Franken's request for counting absentee votes rejected

Al Franken lost one match with the state Canvassing Board today. Franken had asked the board to add rejected absentee ballots to the final count. Norm Coleman's campaign had argued that the board doesn't have the ability to determine that.

The canvassing board rejected Franken's request by a vote of 5-0. There were a total of more than 12,000 rejected absentee ballots, or about 5 percent of the roughly 288,000 absentee ballots attempted to be cast, Ritchie said.

That 288,000 figure was a state record. There is some hope for voters concerned that their ballots were wrongly rejected.

The five-member panel was receptive to a proposal from county attorneys to have local election officials to go through their rejected absentee ballots again and look for any that do not meet the state legal criteria for being rejected.